FileVault stuck on "Encryption Paused"

I have the same problem. Brand new MBP 15. I spent a lot of time on the phone with Apple. I was surprised that each time, each new person, was completely unaware of this problem. My case was escalated and everybody was very nice. But there is no estimated fix. I was told that my file system is not actually in danger and there is no chance that I will lose my files. I am not sure that I am confident in this information. I sure wish that Apple would do a better job and take this seriously. The whole point of me shifting to Apple was reliability. This has, quite frankly, shaken my confidence pretty dramatically.

I had the same issue.

Reinstalled a clean and fresh Yosemite in recovery mode without activation of Filevault this time.

I'll activate it with next Yosemite update when this bug will be solved.

Before that, and even now, with clean install, i regulary found problems on files permissions when i check with diskutil.

Don't know if it's normal on a brand new macbook pro (ssd), but disk vérification is always good.

I suppose it may be secure to make a Check and correct permissions BEFORE enabling Filevault.

Maybe this is a cause of hanging the process.

Brand new macbook and this is what I get?

Its been three days that I purchased my new Macbook Pro and the File Vault encryption is stuck.It says to connect it to the power adapter to resume encryption.

I do and nothing happens. (even left it plugged in no matter what it said, for one day)

Any useful ideas anyone?

Scafede - Another satisfied customer! Same deal - changed power outlets while setting up a new Air. Went into the well-documented "encryption paused" mode 3 minutes from being finished. Ran through the process and about 30 seconds after booting up, it resumed and finished in about 30 minutes.

Sanderson, that looks fine to me. That's exactly how mine looked when I did Scafede's procedure.

Macintosh HD is your working drive. disk1 is the recovery partition (which as I understand it is a disk image that mounts in recovery mode). You don't want to mess with disk1.

I´ve had it with this and just did a wipe and clean install without Filevault. That then hung itself up, I had to force a restart and did another reinstall on top of that. As far as I can tell the system now runs fine, but I´m rather disappointed in Yosemite as a whole. Here´s to hoping 10.10.2 will fix all these things.

I´d appreciate any help in "veryfying" the performance, however that would be done.

If you are using a MacBook, you can check this...While you are running on battery (i.e., AC power is disconnected), check the battery. If it says FileVault is a significant user of battery, then FileVault may still be trying to run in the background. Two points: This is highly unlikely given your reinstall, but I once got to the point of checking absolutely everything so it may be worth a quick look. Also, this suggestion doesn't answer your macro question about other possible performance problems, but I hope it helps a little. I too am waiting for an Apple upgrade fix.

Hi all,

I had the same problem with a brand new MBP that came with Yosemite. I activated FileVault on battery power and then connected the power supply when the message "Connect power adapter to resume encryption" appeared. However, the encryption process did not continue and the message stayed.

I tried Scafede's procedure and all other ideas given here to continue the encryption process, but none of them worked for my Mac. Luckily the hanging process seemed to have no effect on the performance of the system.

This is how I was finally able to solve the problem:

I configured Time Machine and made a backup of the system. This went through without problems, despite of the hanging encryption process. Then I booted into recovery (Cmd+R pressed while rebooting), deleted the partition Macintosh HD in the disk utility und recreated it without encryption. After that I simply restored the system from the TM backup. Before rebooting I did a PRAM reset (probably unnecessary) and checked in the disk utility that the restored partition was indeed not encrypted. The Mac booted without problems and FileVault was deactivated. No data was lost, everything fine.

After that I dared to activate FileVault again - and this time the encryption process went smoothly.

Andrew call me back from Apple today. There is nothing they can do. I have to make a backup and reinstall. The bill for my time now exceeds $2700 much more than the price of the computer. I urge everyone to avoid MacBook Pro and Yosemite until Apple gets their act in gear. Naturally, I wouldn't touch filevault with a ten-foot pole.

Thus, if you want enterprise computing with a secure file system you must opt for Windows.

I never thought I would say that.

Sad day.

scafede wrote:

Hi,

same problem, i've try the command in terminal but no way

i've resolved the issued doing this:

restarting my mac book pro ssd 500gb

reset pram with option+cmd+p+r

booting with cmd+r the utility disc (i've macintosh hd and one partition encrypted (the one with encoding paused)) >select the partition encrypted>click file and unlock>repair the partition disk>repair permission on partition>repair macintosh hd

restar

the encryption was resumed, after almost 9 hour the encryption ended.

Hope this can help you.

Federico

Thank you very much, scafede. I got a MacBook Pro for Christmas and set it up with FileFault (which Apple recommends during setup). It took almost half an hour to go throught the setup process, and then as I was exploring the settings, I discovered I had the same problem as everyone here - encryption paused even though I was plugged in, and it never resumed. Your solution worked perfectly for me.

Just though I'd chime in with another similar story. I just bought a macbook pro retina. Enabled FileVault assuming it would actually work. The progress bar shows what appears to be 100% complete, but it says the encryption is paused due to being on battery even though the power adapter is plugged in and it's fully charged. I tried a few of the suggestions here with no luck. We need a patch for this issue ASAP!!

This is my first Apple laptop after being a long time Windows user. So far I am not impressed. I thought this sort of tweaking was only necessary on Windows boxes.

Just wanted to add my name to something that appears to be happening to quite a few new users of FileVault on new MacBooks. There are many good suggestions in this post and I wanted to say thanks to those of you who positively contribute to fix everyone else's issues. I will be trying to fix this issue based on some of your findings. 🙂

I've also been dealing with the "Encryption Paused" problem on a new Macbook Air. I've been monitoring this thread for a few months and I've tried most of the solutions presented here to no avail. I ignored the problem for a long time, but finally gave in and decided to start from scratch.

I was concerned that the FileVault state might somehow affect the time capsule backups, so I tested the latest backup on an older mac pro first (successfully). Once I verified that the backup/recovery process was sound I began the process on the Macbook Air. I left FileVault disabled during setup and enabled it after migration assistant completed.

Everything seems fine, *now*, but after initial FileVault setup I received the "Encryption Paused" message again for a few minutes. As I sat there stunned the encryption process finally kicked in.

Thank you to everyone who has attempted to help others on this thread. FileVault is a pretty sensitive operation and it's scary to feel like your data is at risk.

I'm disappointed that a thread this long has gotten no official response. "Patch coming soon" through word of mouth is unacceptable.

I fixed it by doing a clean install. I used TimeMachine to backup the current data to an external hard drive. Then recovery mode to erase the Macintosh HD partition. Then reinstalled OS-X in recovery mode. Took about 2 hours to download everything over WIFI. I used my apple iCloud account as the login account as before.

During the re-install, it never asked if I wanted FileVault enabled. It enabled it by default and started encrypting in the background. But it finished encryption this time. I left the power adaptor plugged in the whole time.

Now I have to figure out how to do a partial restore from Time Machine.

Just bought new 13" Retina Mac. I checked enable File Vault during the initial Migration from Time Machine during the setup. Got the "Encryption Paused..." warning. Tried every trick on the web to fix it with no luck. Everyone save your time and just WIPE THE HARD DRIVE AND START OVER!!! After clean install, I setup new Mac without Migrating anything. When it asks for User and Computer Name, just put whatever in those fields because you'll write over it when you finally do Migration later. After setting everything up like new computer, go get all updates from App Store. With that done, plug in Time Machine Backup and open Migration Assistant. It won't ask to Enable File Vault during this process. When everything is restored and you're happy, go to File Vault tab and select Enable. Done. Clearly a bug in Yosemite setup.